These moist Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes are easy to make with a box of cake mix, and taste heavenly with a swirl of lemon cream cheese frosting!
How to Make Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
Keep these delicious cupcakes in mind for your next celebration, or for the lemon lovers in your life! You can find the full, printable recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!
- First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Add cupcake liners to the cupcake pan(s)
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and mix for 1 more minute. If you are using a hand mixer, mix for a bit longer. Instead of folding in the blueberries, we will add them in the next step.
- Scoop batter into the cupcake liners. Sprinkle tops with 4-5 blueberries each. Adjust number to your liking. They will sink into the cupcake as they bake- but some will stay suspended.
- Bake at 350 F for about 16 minutes or until the centers spring back when lightly touched (or toothpick can be inserted and removed with just a few crumbs attached).
- Remove from cupcakes from the pan as soon as you can (within a minute or two). Place on a cooling rack.
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
We frosted our cupcakes with swirls of lemon cream cheese frosting! This is one of our favorite recipes, it is so creamy, delicious, and easy to make!
Lemon cream cheese frosting is a combination of softened butter and cream cheese, confectioners' sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and a bit of lemon extract.
Assembling the Cupcakes
We decorated our Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes very simply with a swirls of frosting and fresh blueberries!
For the frosting swirls, we used a 1M large star piping tip. To make a simple swirl, hold the piping bag vertically over the cupcake, outlining the outer edge and spiral inward and upward before releasing the pressure. Top with each with a blueberry!
You can find more on frosting swirls in our cupcake basics tutorial.
This batter isn't as thick as some of our other lemon blueberry cake recipes. For this reason, I added the blueberries to the top of the cupcake batter before baking.
Some berries will sink to the bottom, other blueberries will sink just slightly. We were happiest with the dispersement of the blueberries with this method rather than when we folded the berries into the batter.
Yes, because of the lemon cream cheese frosting, these cupcakes should be refrigerated. However, for best flavor and texture, remove from the refrigerator 1-2 hours before serving to allow them to warm and soften.
This recipe is based on our popular Lemon Cake from Cake Mix recipe, however we used a whole box of lemon pudding rather than ½ box. We did this to thicken up the consistency of the cupcakes, to make the blueberries less likely to sink.
Yes, you can bake, wrap, and freeze the cupcakes for up to three months. After baking, allow the cupcakes to cool.
Line the cooled cupcakes onto a sheet cake board, cover with a long sheet or two of plastic wrap, followed by tightly wrapped aluminum foil. To thaw, place (wrapped) in the refrigerator overnight and then bring to room temperature.
More Doctored Cake Mix Recipes
We've made so many cake mix recipes over the years! You can find the full collection here: Favorite Doctored Cake Mix Recipes. We're sharing a few of our favorites below!
More Lemon Cakes
Lemon cakes are probably the most popular flavor of recipes on our site! Everybody seems to love lemon (us included)! Here are just a few of our favorite Lemon Cakes!
Enjoy the Recipe!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy these Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes. If you give the recipe a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!
Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 Box White Cake Mix, sifted (15.25 oz) We used Duncan Hines Perfectly Moist
- 1 cup (114g) all purpose flour (plain in the UK)
- 1 cup (200g) sugar
- 1 (3.4 oz) Box Instant Lemon Pudding (We used Jell-O Brand. Do not make the pudding.)
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ⅓ cups (322g) water
- 1 cup (242g) sour cream (we use full fat sour cream)
- 1 Tablespoon (12g) lemon extract
- ½ teaspoon (2g) vanilla extract
- zest of one lemon
- 1 Cup Blueberries (We used fresh but frozen should be fine also.) Adjust amount to your liking.
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 cup (226g) Unsalted Butter, softened (softened but still cool to the touch- Equivalent of 2 sticks of butter)
- 16 oz Cream Cheese, softened (453 total gram weight-This is two 8 oz packages) Use full fat cream cheese for best results.
- 2 teaspoons (8g) lemon juice (optional)
- 1 teaspoon (4g) lemon extract
- Zest from 1 lemon approximately 1 ½ teaspoons (3g)
- 6 to 6 ½ cups 690g - 747g powdered sugar, sifted
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Add cupcake liners to the cupcake pan(s)
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- Skip the blueberries for now, and add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and mix for 1 more minute. If you are using a hand mixer, mix for a bit longer. We will add the blueberries in the next step.
- Scoop batter into the cupcake liners. Sprinkle tops with 4-5 blueberries each. Adjust number to your liking. They will sink into the cupcake as they bake- but some will stay suspended.
- Bake at 350 F for about 16 minutes or until the centers spring back when lightly touched (or toothpick can be inserted and removed with just a few crumbs attached).
- Remove from cupcakes from the pan as soon as you can (within a minute or two). Place on a cooling rack.
- Makes 7 ½ cups batter
For the Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
- Add the softened butter to the bowl of your mixer, mix until smooth.
- Cut the softened cream cheese into pieces and add to the butter, mixing until blended.
- Add the lemon juice and lemon zest. 1 teaspoon lemon extract, for a stronger lemon flavor.
- Gradually add powdered sugar and beat until well blended.
- This frosting will pipe best if used while still chilled. You can make it in advance, refrigerate and when ready to use let it soften slightly and remix. Do not microwave to soften. If the frosting becomes too soft while using just refrigerate the piping bag or bowl for a short while to firm it up.
Decorating the Cupcakes
- Frost the cupcakes once they have cooled. We used a 1M piping tip to apply swirls of frosting to the top of the cupcakes, and topped each with a fresh blueberry.
Storage
- Because of the cream cheese frosting, these cupcakes should be refrigerated in an airtight container or bakery box. Remove from the refrigerator 1-2 hours before serving to allow the cupcakes to warm and soften.
Looks and sounds delish! :-) I could totally eat one LOL ;-)